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To: BroJoeK
"I don't want to sound ungrateful, but we can deal with quotes here."

Sure, that's reasonable. I know that not everybody wants nor cares for audio books, and this one in particular which while I think the quality of all the readers is very good, it's not one solo reader throughout. Still. 90% of something is clearly better than 100% of nothing, and I'm not aware of very many books like this one that exist just to serve this very topic.

Some of the quotes you've already seen in days gone by by J. Adams, G.W. Jefferson, and others in regard to the ills of slavery. That's nothing new, people use them. Here is John Jay, author (1/3) of the Federalist:

In 1785, Mr. Jay wrote : — "It is much to be wished that slavery may be abolished. The honor of the States, as well as justice and humanity, in my opinion, loudly call upon them to emancipate these unhappy people. To contend for our own liberty, and to deny that blessing to others, involves an inconsistency not to be excused." — Idem, vol. i. p. 231.

Of course, Governor John Jay happily signed New York's emancipation bill a decade later. Here is Dr. Franklin:

In a letter to Dean Woodward, dated London, April 10th, 1773, Dr. Franklin says, — ..." I have since had the satisfaction to learn that a disposition to abolish slavery prevails in North America; that many of the Pennsylvanians have set their slaves at liberty; and that even the Virginia Assembly have petitioned the king for permission to make a law for preventing the importation of more into that Colony. This request, however, will probably not be granted, as their former laws of that kind have always been repealed, and as the interest of a few merchants here has more weight with Government than that of thousands at a distance." — Sparks's Franklin, vol. viii. p. 42.

I quote Franklin in part because Franklin's words on abolitionism, as well as his deeds, seem to never get mentioned or at least I've never seen them. These quotes are not go-to which is strange to me in light of NYT 1619. They ought to be first in line. IMHO there are also times where I get a sense that there is an aggressive mission on the part of some to act like abolitionism never existed - until the 1840's/civil war era - and that Americans copied British abolitionism, which makes it an alien concept unrelated to the founding. Some people seem to need this to be true and I do not know why.

I think the more interesting one from this book is the mention of Art. 4 of the original Articles of Confederation. After quoting the article itself, Livermore notes:

It was not by accident or oversight that negroes were included in the phrase "free inhabitants"; for, when this article was under consideration, the delegates from South Carolina moved to amend, by inserting between the words "free" and "inhabitants" the word "white." The proposed amendment was lost; only two States voting in the affirmative.

What Livermore did (or at least indicates that he did) was go digging through debate notes and historical vote counts to highlight what Art. 4 actually means or at least, how far it goes toward inclusion.

My point here is that I do not believe I have ever seen anybody anywhere ever quote the Articles of Confederation in discussion and I think that in the context of NYT 1619, why shouldn't we quote from the Articles? It does show that even then the Founders did have equality in mind, it just wasn't all 13 colonial members who agreed on it.

Our country did not fail on race, not during the founding. That was forced on us prior to independence and gained new life thanks to Eli Whitney.

30 posted on 08/06/2023 11:18:31 AM PDT by ProgressingAmerica (The historians must be stopped. They're destroying everything.)
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To: ProgressingAmerica; Renfrew; wardaddy; Pelham; DiogenesLamp; central_va; woodpusher; x
ProgressingAmerica quoting Benjamin Franklin: "I have since had the satisfaction to learn that a disposition to abolish slavery prevails in North America..."

Thanks for your new quotes, I've added them to my collection of Founders' anti-slavery quotes.
Your Jay quote I had already, plus other quotes from Washington, Adams & Patrick Henry.

Indeed, the key point to remember here is that neither I nor anybody else has ever found a Founder's quote to the effect that slavery was a good thing and should be both preserved and expanded.
At best (or worst) our Founders believed slavery was a necessary evil which should be abolished wherever and whenever possible.

ProgressingAmerica: "Our country did not fail on race, not during the founding.
That was forced on us prior to independence and gained new life thanks to Eli Whitney."

Well... the question you raise here is whether slavery was a flaw in our Constitution or a feature of it?
The answer is, slavery was not just a flaw, rather, it was an essential feature, arguably the most essential feature, because, had the Founders not agreed to it, then there would be no United States.
Slave-states would have refused to ratify in 1788 and the Constitution would have failed ratification by 3/4 of states.
How long the old Articles of Confederation would have lasted after that is anybody's guess.

Gradual abolition was also one of our Founders' original intentions and it was well under way in 1787.
Our Founders had reasons to believe that abolition would be eventually accomplished, state by state, working from North to South.

That original plan was not fully abandoned until the Founding generation was gone and abolition failed in Virginia, circa 1835.
Only then did pro-slavery politicians begin to argue full-throated that slavery was a positive good thing that should be preserved and expanded as much as possible.

73 posted on 08/11/2023 5:03:11 AM PDT by BroJoeK (future DDG 134 -- we remember)
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